


I Broke The Glass (and you were there, to sweep it aside)

by robogalaxy



Series: deadlyroses 🌹 [24]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Declarations Of Love, Dialogue Heavy, During Canon, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, One Shot, Self-Worth Issues, also i go italics crazy lmao, and TIRED., but Rose and Oleana are confused, devoted, like i know how else to describe this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24260254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robogalaxy/pseuds/robogalaxy
Summary: The top of Rose Tower is left alone to two individuals, broken and desperate, who know what they have to do.They've planned for so long, after all.
Relationships: Olive | Oleana/Rose | Chairman Rose
Series: deadlyroses 🌹 [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2162211
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	I Broke The Glass (and you were there, to sweep it aside)

**Author's Note:**

> title from mother mother's oleander (it's... it's so GOOD and fits so well with this mood)

Trembling, Oleana held onto a strand of her hair and tugged at it with enough force to pain her but not enough to pull it out. It brought her back to reality, away from the slowly enveloping feeling of spaciness engulfing her. Her throat was raw and her voice was gone, lost with what was probably left of her patience (or sanity, if by any means someone wanted to reach that far). Words left her with great trepidation as she saw the chairman still as stone out of the corner of her eye, but left nonetheless.

"...Does it infuriate you, sir,” Oleana began, “that I managed to lose so tremendously to a _child_?"

"Does it infuriate me," Rose repeated, the dark sky littered with the neon lights of Wyndon's nightlife reflecting against the two of them, "that you tried your best to keep our plans alive? To remain loyal to what we've started? Nonsense. No, I don't believe I'm angry at you for doing what you believed was best at the moment.”

"I'm glad to hear you say that,” Oleana muttered between her short lapses of judgement, her mind clouded by sudden self-loathing and drastic worries of disappointing the chairman far beyond redemption, “but I _can_ take the truth, sir. You don’t have to lie to me.” What seemed like centuries ago now, she praised him so, demanded the children stay away from him with a burning anger. She currently sat in the center of the tower's highest floor as she tended to Garbodor's mild wounds, hushing her soft moans of pain and whispering calming words like a lullaby she’d sing to a baby. _You fought hard for me, lovey,_ Oleana thought, _I just hate to remind you just how cowardly of a trainer you’ve been stuck with._

" _Sir_ ," Rose repeated again, hands clasped behind his back as his eyes peered off into the distance, "no, love, please don’t use that any longer. It’s too formal for when it is only us." His voice stood calm against the wind, barely any inflection given as the words floated into the brisk air around them. 

"No, no, it's not," Oleana argued, "I made mistakes, sir, and I don't think it's by any means right to call you by your name at the moment.”

"Oleana,” Rose called out, “please, let me ask you. Are you hearing yourself?" His question was flat, blunt, punctuated. Oleana was almost certainly taken aback, but tried to mask it as well as she could with what remained of her energy.

"Excuse me?" 

"I said, are you hearing yourself, love," Rose said with the same lack of rhythm to his voice, something about its neutrality striking to Oleana in her panicked state, "talking about yourself like that? Don't deserve to call me by my name," he scoffed, "don't be silly." He turned around to meet Oleana's vacant gaze, her eyes glossed over, smile lacking, words soft against the harshness of the situation. _She has no need to pity herself, only a need to realize that she’s much stronger than she thinks_ , Rose said within his mind, too preoccupied with finishing the conversation of business before letting himself show the appreciation he ached to give to the woman sitting with her legs crossed, stories above the rest of the cities Rose longed to revitalize. _You’ve never deserved to feel guilty or lackluster, embarrassed or ashamed of your dedication to our ideas._

"But I've _failed_ you," Oleana responded, "I let them know all about Leon’s planned involvement. I let them know we wanted to break Leon’s state and all I’ve done is break my own, and in _such_ a mortifying way. I’ve embarrassed you, I’ve shamed this company. There’s no getting around it, sir, and I want an answer. I've let you down, haven’t I?” She’d cried enough after the children and champion left, almost certain there were no tears left to cry, but tonight was one that had already gone awry and deviated from the expected; as such, a tear ran its way down Oleana’s face and landed on Garbodor’s head, absorbed as quickly as it dropped.

"Someone like you who's been standing so diligently by my side, Oleana,” Rose said as quiet footsteps got him closer to his vice president, “dedicated to the same aspects of the future as I am, so smart and so strong in her own right, and you think you've let me down?” 

“Well,” Oleana stated as her hands pet gently at Garbodor, one of them paying special attention to the puffs atop her head that glinted purple with bruises, “in a way, yes. I know you aren’t one to blame me for everything, sir, nor much of _anything_ , as a matter of fact, but I overstepped my boundaries. I know I’ve made you upset.”

“And explain to me, then, Oleana, what exactly did you do to overstep these said boundaries?” His question lingered in the air, the stern look on his face muddied by the haze of the night. No pause was given for Oleana to have a chance to speak as Rose calmly carried on. “If I’m remembering correctly, you have done nothing but send children on a chase meant to challenge themselves and their minds, and then you engaged in battle with one of them, correct? In my opinion, at least,” Rose continued after clearing his throat of the zipping, unprofessional thoughts aching to verbalize themselves, “what you’ve done isn’t any challenge that exceeded what the gym leaders put them through in terms of difficulty, so what is there to worry about?” There was a tenderness locked behind his words, though it hid away, afraid to add even more vulnerability to a state so rife with it already.

“I worry because they won,” Oleana replied, “they outsmarted me, and thus, by extension, they’ve outsmarted you.” Her eyes landed on the floor below them, looking at the blues of the ground rather than meeting Rose’s gaze. If she deserved to look at him, then she would’ve with no hesitation, she would’ve even sent Garbodor away so she wouldn’t have to watch Oleana grab tightly to Rose’s jacket collar and pull him towards her so she could plant a fierce kiss on him in the midst of the night. However, this was not the time for her to gain his affections, much less time for her to even feel worthy of getting them later on. She broke down to protect his name, drove herself insane, and was on the way to tarnishing her reputation. That wasn’t deserving of praise, deserving of appreciation, and was lacking any qualities that could define it as beneficial to the goals at hand.

 _Do you even deserve to be here,_ she thought, _do you? Oleana Calypso, listen to me, you daft bitch, do you deserve to even be here right now? You’ve made a mess of yourself – a disgraceful one, at that._

“It’s too late to stop now, love,” Rose spoke, interrupting Oleana’s internal tirade, “you know as well as I do that the crux of our plan has been set in motion. The creature’s been kept under Hammerlocke and sealed with utmost care, the Wishing Stars are ready for it to consume. We’ve done the math, we’ve let our good intentions be known to those most important. It may not have gone as planned, yes, but nonetheless, we’ve accomplished what we had to for the future of Galar to see the light of day.” 

“You’ve done well, sir,” Oleana muttered.

“ _We’ve_ done well, darling,” Rose corrected, “ _we’ve_ done well. Honestly, to think I could have made it this far without you is just preposterous. This is not just _my_ plan anymore, Oleana. It’s _ours_ and _has_ been ours for years. Will I have to repeat myself for you to understand that?” He talked with a newly found passion, a rousing pattern of speech that tried its best to hook Oleana and pull her away from the anxiety that was slowly taking over her. She didn’t respond to his question, opting instead to send Garbodor back to her Pokèball as a means to distract herself for only a second. 

“And…” she faltered, “you truly believe this?” 

“My _Arceus,_ Oleana,” Rose said as he kneeled down and put out a hand for her to hold onto, “of course I do. I’ve never once believed otherwise.” With her hand gripping tightly to his, he helped her stand up off of the ground. She paused a moment to dust herself off and simply take in the air around them; she aimed to ground herself before any feelings of self-hatred came back to her in droves. Oleana walked with Rose to the edge of the tower, a scene of bright, bold, flashy colors laid out in front of them while he continued to hold her hand, pausing to look back out into the distance.

 _Has he always looked this worn out?_ Oleana thought as she focused on the angles of his face, _I swear there’s grey in his hair, and it’s obvious he’s used foundation under his eyes._

“But you,” she asked, “you can’t be fine either. There’s no way in hell you _can_ be.” 

“Oleana,” he began, squeezing her hand a bit harder, “I’m a man who worries, and worries, and worries, so caught up in my own world that I’ve barely gotten time to sleep, to do anything for leisure, to _exist_ without work on the mind.”

“Oh, trust me,” she replies, “don’t I know that.”

“I love this place with all my heart. This region, this city, this tower...I could not imagine a world in which I fail Galar. I can’t have that world become reality and we’ve worked day after day, night after night to ensure that we will bring about only a prosperous future for this place. No doubt,” Rose sighed as he let go of Oleana’s hand, “no doubt I’m not fine. But what has to be done _has_ to be done, and it’s far too late to stop now because the Champion and a couple of gym challenge contenders set up a minor roadblock. I assure you, my love,” he said as he turned around to Oleana, eyes once more inclined to look into hers, “that what we’re doing will change history.” Oleana turned herself to look at Rose, his eyes weary but his smile genuine, his posture informal but his words sincere. 

“What we’re doing,” Oleana parroted as she stepped closer to him, “will change history.” Her arms wrapped around him without even thinking about it, her earlier thoughts of kissing him (and this time with a little more force) coming back to her almost instantly.

“It’s _us_ , darling,” Rose said, “it’s always been us.” 

“Me and you,” Oleana replied as she let go to cup Rose’s face, running a thumb over the bridge of his nose with utmost care, “for the prosperity of what we love.”

“This will be a Galar we can be even prouder of, my dearest, and to see our plans through without you here beside me is too torturous to even think about.” Rose followed his statement with a simple push of Oleana’s hair back behind her ear and a reciprocated brush of the nose before reaching out to kiss her. She accepted this more than eagerly, finally getting to tug at his suit jacket (if only for a minute before feeling guilty because she knew it wasn’t cheap) before Rose let go, taking a moment to speak. 

“Oleana,” he began, “I am deeply, wholeheartedly, and undeniably in love with you and everything you’ve done for the company, for the region, for the world at large. You are so wonderful, so marvelous, talented and intelligent. I love you, more than any words can say, yet I know I just tried.” The edges of Oleana’s mouth twitched a little, a semblance of a smile reaching her face for the first time in hours.

“Antony,” she muttered, seeming to finally open up after the agonizing period of self hatred and doubt, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a man, or hell, met anybody that I’ve loved as much as you.” Her words were concise, limited by her emotional exhaustion, but Rose took them as they were. 

“It’s us, darling,” he said as he looked out onto Wyndon again, arms holding a woman so dear to his heart and so crucial to their plans, “it always has been.”

“Always,” Oleana parrots, holding herself with a bit more poise than before. Turning to Rose, she couldn’t help herself and pulled him into a kiss again, something he did not deny her of in the slightest.

It’s always been them, after all, together for the prosperity of Galar. To deny this was absolutely a lie and to say they weren’t doing what’s best for the region was as well. Eternatus would be awoken, power would flood the cities, the world would be different, for the better. The chairman and his vice president were not dumb and did not do this in vain.

And even if they did, they did it together. 

**Author's Note:**

> i know this scene has been written ab so many times but i... i had to have a take on it and how i didn't write it earlier??? i have no clue omg. i just love them..... and i wanted another fic that takes place during game canon before all hell breaks loose .0.
> 
> thank you SO much for reading!! feel free to leave kudos, comments, and bookmarks~ <3


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